In January of this year, while I was waiting for my D200 to finally ship I bought a Nikon D70S so I could take pics at the Indy Dealer Show. This was a couple of weeks before Indy this year and I realized I needed a good flash unit if I was going to overcome the lighting problems I've run into in the past at trade shows. SOOOO I got a real flash unit a couple of days before the event. Bad timing is my middle name.
Trying to shoot good pictures in the weird lighting of a Trade Show while trying to learn a new camera and a complicated (but incredibly good) flash system is interesting to say the least. NEEDLESS to say, the pictures I did get leave a LOT to be desired. :bang:
I usually post some of my pics and Eric's pics from the show but I was sort of disappointed that with great gear I didn't take equally great pictures, so I hesitated to post. I eventually just parked the pics on my hard disk and went on with the task of learning how to shoot effectively with a serious flash unit. I never really worked with flash in the past so it's been a long but fun filled journey.
Now that we have a photo forum I figured seeing the some of the shot brackets might help someone else, so I figured I would make a gallery and post them in their unaltered state. I only deleted a couple of the really awful shots, the rest are semi-good and bad side by side with no help from Photoshop. :whoa:
The pics came out of the camera in RAW, and then were batch converted to JPEG with no changes other than a global setting of normal sharpening.
They were shot with a 6.1mp Nikon D70S (A FABULOUS camera for the price), using a Nikkor f3.5-4.5/18-70mm lens lens and a Nikon SB800 flash unit mounted on the hotshoe. Mounting the flash on the hotshoe was probably the first, but not my last mistake. :) ISO was set at 200 (lowest) and aperture priority. All shots were handheld.
These are the 800 pixel wide shots with moderate/high compression :
http://www.four-stroke.com/images/Indy_06/
If you have a BIG monitor and a fast connections these are 1280 wide and have a lot less compression:
http://www.four-stroke.com/images/Indy_06_big/
Hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes, I know I sure did. :whoa:
I'm going take what I've learned and get some unreal shots at the next Indy Show. Count on it. ;)
Trying to shoot good pictures in the weird lighting of a Trade Show while trying to learn a new camera and a complicated (but incredibly good) flash system is interesting to say the least. NEEDLESS to say, the pictures I did get leave a LOT to be desired. :bang:
I usually post some of my pics and Eric's pics from the show but I was sort of disappointed that with great gear I didn't take equally great pictures, so I hesitated to post. I eventually just parked the pics on my hard disk and went on with the task of learning how to shoot effectively with a serious flash unit. I never really worked with flash in the past so it's been a long but fun filled journey.
Now that we have a photo forum I figured seeing the some of the shot brackets might help someone else, so I figured I would make a gallery and post them in their unaltered state. I only deleted a couple of the really awful shots, the rest are semi-good and bad side by side with no help from Photoshop. :whoa:
The pics came out of the camera in RAW, and then were batch converted to JPEG with no changes other than a global setting of normal sharpening.
They were shot with a 6.1mp Nikon D70S (A FABULOUS camera for the price), using a Nikkor f3.5-4.5/18-70mm lens lens and a Nikon SB800 flash unit mounted on the hotshoe. Mounting the flash on the hotshoe was probably the first, but not my last mistake. :) ISO was set at 200 (lowest) and aperture priority. All shots were handheld.
These are the 800 pixel wide shots with moderate/high compression :
http://www.four-stroke.com/images/Indy_06/
If you have a BIG monitor and a fast connections these are 1280 wide and have a lot less compression:
http://www.four-stroke.com/images/Indy_06_big/
Hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes, I know I sure did. :whoa:
I'm going take what I've learned and get some unreal shots at the next Indy Show. Count on it. ;)
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